Open Thread, February 15-29, 2012

OpenThreadGuy

If it's worth saying, but not worth its own post (even in Discussion), then it goes here.

You're being kind of a jerk. Your questions aren't relevant to the information I wanted; you're just picking on me because I brought up something vaguely related.

That having been said:

Yeah, I know about Valentine's day. That's why this was on my mind.

I don't think singlehood will kill my partner or cause him to shun me. (Although if I didn't poke him about cryo, he might cryocrastinate himself to room-temperatureness.) I'm not hoping that anyone will "enforce" anything about my prospective marriage.

My culture encourages permanent and public-facing relationships to be solidified with a party and thereafter called by a different name. In particular, it has caused me to assign value to producing children in this context rather than outside of it. I believe that getting married will affect my primate brain and the primate brains of my and my partner's families and friends in various ways, mostly positive. It will entitle me to use different words, which I want, and entitle me to wear certain jewelry, which I want, and allow me to summarize my inextricability from my partner very concisely to people in general, which I want. It will also allow me to get on my partner's health insurance.

Edit in response to edit: I'm poly, but my style of poly involves a primary relationship (this one). It doesn't seem at all unreasonable to go ahead and promote it to a new set of terms.

Picking on you? You responded to him. You're going out of your way to be offended. You can feel free to not explain your viewpoints, but when someone poses a question don't respond with a throw-away comment and then get annoyed it gets responded to.

12[anonymous]14y

It seems cultural and perhaps even value differences are the root of how this conversation proceeded. Ok I think I understand now. I should have suspected this earlier, I was way too stuck in my local cultural context where among the young basically only the religious still marry and it is generally seen as an "old fashioned" thing to do.

8[anonymous]14y

As I said I didn't mean to be. I am genuinely curious why in the world someone would do this because I haven't heard any good reasons in favour of it except that it is "tradition" or that else they'd be living in sin and fear of punishment by a supernatural entity. But I do apologize for any personal offence I may have inadvertently caused. I did not meant to imply either you or your partner (about whom I know nothing!) where particularly unsuited for this arrangement. I was questioning its necessity or desirability in general. I generally have been pretty consistent at questioning the value of this particular legally binding institution so it seems unlikely that I wouldn't have posed the exact same question in response to anyone else making such a request. I will not apologize for posing uncomfortable questions. I don't want other people respecting my own ugh fields so I generally on LessWrong don't bother avoiding poking into those of others.

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Open Thread, February 15-29, 2012

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